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Fears of Muslim Brotherhood Takeover of Egyptian Military

 

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COMMENT: We’ve report­ed on the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s move to estab­lish civil­ian par­al­lel police to sup­ple­ment the secu­ri­ty forces, coop­er­at­ing in this with the al-Qae­da-infil­trat­ed Gama’a-al-Islamiya.

Observers now report fears that the Broth­er­hood may be try­ing to infil­trate the Egypt­ian mil­i­tary, tra­di­tion­al­ly an non-ide­o­log­i­cal force in Egypt­ian soci­ety.

IF the Broth­er­hood can suc­cess­ful­ly co-opt the mil­i­tary, their dom­i­na­tion of the mil­i­tary and par­al­lel police may cement the orga­ni­za­tion’s con­trol of Egypt­ian soci­ety and the result­ing imple­men­ta­tion of Islamism.

“Egypt Fears ‘Ikhwaniza­tion’ of Mil­i­tary” by Mohamed Abdu Has­sanein; Asharq Al-Awsat.net; 3/20/2013.

EXCERPT: Fears of the “Ikhwaniza­tion” of the Egypt­ian army have been raised after Egypt­ian Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my Direc­tor Major Gen­er­al Esmat Murad revealed that stu­dents with links to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood or Salafist polit­i­cal fac­tions have been accept­ed into the acad­e­my, includ­ing Pres­i­dent Mohamed Mursi’s own nephew.

An Egypt­ian sol­dier, speak­ing to Asharq Al-Awsat on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, revealed that “for the first time, stu­dents whose fam­i­lies or rel­a­tives are involved in polit­i­cal activism, whether for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood or any­body else, are being accept­ed into the Egypt­ian armed forces which had tra­di­tion­al­ly inves­ti­gat­ed the [polit­i­cal] back­ground of recruits, reject­ing those with any such con­nec­tion.”

Until the Jan­u­ary 25 rev­o­lu­tion both Egypt’s mil­i­tary and police acad­e­mies rou­tine­ly reject­ed stu­dents who held polit­i­cal views or were mem­bers of polit­i­cal move­ments the author­i­ties judged to be sub­ver­sive, even going so far as reject­ing recruits if mem­bers of their fam­i­ly had any such views or ties to Islamist orga­ni­za­tions.

How­ev­er since the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mur­si came to pow­er in late June 2012, and par­tic­u­lar­ly after he forced out Field Mar­shal Tanta­wi, there have been esca­lat­ing fears of the “Ikhwaniza­tion” of the mil­i­tary, although this is some­thing that senior mil­i­tary fig­ures have repeat­ed­ly denied.

How­ev­er, Major Gen­er­al Esmat Murad, direc­tor of Egypt’s pres­ti­gious Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my, held a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day dur­ing which he revealed that the academy’s grad­u­at­ing class num­ber 109 includes stu­dents who have a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood back­ground. . . .

Discussion

One comment for “Fears of Muslim Brotherhood Takeover of Egyptian Military”

  1. Mor­si just made a new decree: You can crit­i­cize him, just not in ways that under­mine his cred­i­bil­i­ty as a demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed leader. And if the oppo­si­tion con­tin­ues to be too crit­i­cal of him he’ll issue a crack­down uti­liz­ing unspec­i­fied mea­sures. It rais­es the ques­tion of whether or not crit­i­cism of Mor­si’s under­stand­ing of what con­sti­tutes a “free and demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety” is fair game or will that bring on the unspec­i­fied ‘pro-democ­ra­cy’ crack­downs?

    Egypt­ian Prez Warns Oppo­si­tion of Crack­down, ‘Harsh Deci­sion’
    HAMZA HENDAWI March 24, 2013, 12:19 PM

    CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s pres­i­dent deliv­ered a stern warn­ing to his oppo­nents on Fri­day, say­ing he may be close to tak­ing unspec­i­fied mea­sures to “pro­tect this nation” two days after sup­port­ers of his Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and oppo­si­tion pro­test­ers fought street bat­tles in the worst bout of polit­i­cal vio­lence in three months.

    At least 200 peo­ple were injured in Friday’s vio­lence, some seri­ous­ly, out­side the head­quar­ters of the Broth­er­hood, Egypt’s dom­i­nant polit­i­cal group.

    “If I have to do what is nec­es­sary to pro­tect this nation I will, and I am afraid that I may be close to doing so,” a vis­i­bly angry Mor­si said in an ani­mat­ed speech to the open­ing ses­sion of a con­fer­ence on women’s rights.

    “I will do so very, very soon. Soon­er than those try­ing to shake the image of this nation think,” said the Islamist leader who took office in June as Egypt’s first freely elect­ed pres­i­dent.

    “Let us not be dragged into an area where I will take a harsh deci­sion,” he warned.

    Morsi’s com­ments were ini­tial­ly released in a series of tweets on his account but state tele­vi­sion lat­er aired exten­sive excerpts from the address.

    He also warned that “appro­pri­ate mea­sures” would be tak­en against politi­cians found to be behind Friday’s vio­lence, regard­less of their senior­i­ty. Any­one found to be using the media to “incite vio­lence” will also be held account­able, he added. His com­ments came just hours after dozens of Islamists staged a protest out­side stu­dios belong­ing to inde­pen­dent TV net­works that are crit­i­cal of the Egypt­ian leader.

    The Islamists are protest­ing what they see as the biased cov­er­age of Friday’s clash­es. The Broth­er­hood says it does not sup­port the protest, but some of the pro­test­ers were chant­i­ng slo­gans in sup­port of Broth­er­hood leader Mohammed Badie.

    Friday’s clash­es fol­lowed an assault a week ear­li­er by Broth­er­hood sup­port­ers on pro­test­ers paint­ing deroga­to­ry graf­fi­ti out­side the group’s head­quar­ters. The pro­test­ers chant­ed hos­tile slo­gans and taunt­ed Broth­er­hood sup­port­ers when some of them tried to stop demon­stra­tors from post­ing fly­ers on the head­quar­ters’ out­side walls.

    The Broth­er­hood sup­port­ers also assault­ed reporters at the scene. The group lat­er said its sup­port­ers were pro­voked by the pro­test­ers who scrib­bled pro­fan­i­ties on the head­quar­ters’ out­side walls and that the reporters were part of the protest.

    Morsi’s com­ments made no direct men­tion of the clash­es but appeared to be a pos­si­ble pre­lude to mea­sures against the most­ly lib­er­al and sec­u­lar oppo­si­tion.

    “I call on all polit­i­cal forces not to pro­vide a polit­i­cal cov­er for vio­lence, riot­ing and attacks on pri­vate and pub­lic prop­er­ty,” Mor­si said. “I will not be hap­py if inves­ti­ga­tions find some politi­cians guilty.”

    ...

    He also sought to debunk an often repeat­ed charge that he places the inter­ests of the Broth­er­hood ahead of those of the nation and that he is only the pres­i­dent of the “Broth­ers.”

    “I nev­er was and I nev­er will be,” he said in response to those charges. Ruth­less­ly ridiculed in the inde­pen­dent media, Mor­si said he did not mind the crit­i­cism. “But I will not allow it when crit­i­ciz­ing the pres­i­dent of the repub­lic is designed to under­mine the nation.”

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 25, 2013, 9:12 am

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